A nine-week public inquiry will begin in east London today over the compulsory purchase of land required for the 2012 Olympic site in the Lower Lea Valley. But only 30 to 40 meaningful objections are likely to be aired at the inquiry after the London Development Agency concluded a flurry of last-minute land deals. Nearly 90% of the land is already in public ownership after a series of private agreements, and businesses supporting 70% of the jobs in the Olympic Village area have confirmed relocation sites.

The LDA has spent about £750m on acquiring the land, paying disturbance costs and buying sites outside the Olympic zone to relocate businesses.

The cost is additional to the stated £2.375bn public-sector funding package for the games. But the LDA, which is funded by a direct grant from government, said regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley would have been a priority even if the Olympics had not acted as a catalyst for the process. The project, described as the biggest regeneration in Europe, is designed to create a legacy of 9,000 new homes, 12,000 jobs, two schools and five sporting venues.

The government inspector David Rose will begin hearing objections today to the compulsory purchase order (CPO) for the 306-hectare site. Witnesses will include Lord Coe, chairman of London 2012's organising committee, and David Higgins, chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority. A final decision is expected to be made by Alistair Darling, the new trade and industry secretary, in November with a deadline of July 2007 for all the present occupiers to have left the site.

Manny Lewis, chief executive of the LDA, said: "We have been in dialogue with local businesses for a substantial period of time. We are in a good position to persuade the inspector that we have a very strong case."

He said the LDA was in negotiation with all of the remaining 206 businesses and a third of them had identified sites where they were happy to relocate. "Of the 5,000 jobs that were said to be at risk, we have already safeguarded 70% of them," he said.

The inquiry had received about 400 objections but Gareth Blacker, director of the LDA's Olympic land team, said only 85 were asking to speak and that number was expected to fall to 40 by the end of the week as further agreements were reached.

He said agreement was close to being reached with Lance Forman, owner of the world's oldest salmon smokery and a vociferous opponent of the CPO, who was likely to relocate to a new factory on a former housing association site. Deals have also been reached with most of the 34 statutory bodies on the site, including Network Rail and British Waterways.

"By the end of the week we are likely to have between 30 to 40 people making meaningful objections," Blacker said. "There is one man who is claiming he has held the copyright for staging the Olympics in the Lower Lea Valley for the last 17 years." He said discussions were continuing with Newham and Hackney councils to relocate two Gypsy sites to new traveller sites.

The inquiry, which will be held at the ExCel Centre at the Royal Victoria Dock, is a standard part of the CPO process. The LDA said its preferred option had been to secure land through private agreement with landowners, but because of the area's size and the number of landowners it had decided also to use its compulsory purchase powers because it was unlikely all the land could be acquired by agreement.